12 Shows You Watched In The '90s When You Needed Some Drama In Your Life

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: the 1990s were a simpler time, but only if you lived outside a television set. Whenever your childhood/early adolescence/what have you would get as dead as your Tamagotchi, you luckily had some beloved '90s drama to live through vicariously. I mean, what can I say? It was an era where television was steroid pumped with drama.

So why is that, exactly? One theory is that the teen soap opera was really becoming a fully-formed genre in this era. Every week you could tune into a group of gorgeous teens that were bound to run into all sorts of issues within a 22 to 44 minute running time. Sometimes even some of your light sitcoms would throw in an intense moment where one of their spunky young heroes gets tempted by underage drinking or (gasp!) marijuana. For the length of one very special episode, or even sometimes a whole seasonal arc, these characters were doing the kinds of things that your parents would kill you if you even thought about.

Here are just a few of those shows that you can now more easily backtrack on (thank God for streaming services) when your life is getting a little dull.

1'Dawson's Creek'

2'My So-Called Life'

Every damn episode gave Angela Chase a brand new growing pain, and I get it. If I was a 15-year-old with an identity crisis, a chaotic bad influence bestie, and a beautiful, illiterate Jared Leto leaning all over my world, sophomore year would've been way rougher.

3'Felicity'

4'Full House'

Yes, there was no shortage of light-hearted family antics, and, yet once the piano music started playing, you were in a heavier place. Plus, the girls got into all sorts of shocking antics. Remember that one time Stephanie almost tried a cigarette? Crazy.

9'Buffy The Vampire Slayer'

Every WB teen drama had at least one or two episodes depicting the emotional weight and real life repercussions of losing your virginity. Buffy took that nine episodes and one apocalypse further than the rest.